


Evasion Only Works on Dexterity Saves

by madelinescribbles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:21:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23030872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madelinescribbles/pseuds/madelinescribbles
Summary: Part of Beau always thought she wasn’t special enough to die young. She doesn’t even have a mysterious past or magic powers - she’s just some shithead rich kid from Kamordah who got good at punching. Not really special enough for the universe to want. If she died, it’d be like snuffing out a shitty candle in a room that’s on fire - pointless and none darker.“At least you ate mad pussy.” Is the only comfort her mind can come up with.Or: Beauregard Lionett evades Death; what could possibly go wrong?
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & The Mighty Nein
Comments: 20
Kudos: 107





	Evasion Only Works on Dexterity Saves

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Want to Speak to a Manager, Fuck You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17514014) by [Justanothershortstory_sofar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Justanothershortstory_sofar/pseuds/Justanothershortstory_sofar). 



> The title for this fic comes from the idea that in subsequent chapters, the Raven Queen sends near-death experiences to convince Beau that she can't evade fate. Whether or not I'll ever publish those chapters is up in the air. But I'm now attached to the title so it stays.
> 
> This takes place at some indiscriminate time before the Traveler reveal because I take 6 months to write anything.

There’s an endless black void. It is big, and empty, and flooded about ankle-deep. Whatever’s flooding it is somehow more void.

Beauregard looks over her shoulder. There is, indeed, more void. She faces forward again. It is still void. It is starting to get disorienting. She holds up her fists in ready combat position just so they’re in her field of view, to give her eyes a way to orient up from down.

“Am I dead?” she asks the void. Or maybe herself.

She means it as sort of a joke, but after a few moments of silence, a sense of deep dread creeps in. Her heart is pounding. Except it isn’t. Beauregard realizes it’s not beating at all. 

“Fuck, I’m actually dead.” She says, but doesn’t lower her fists. She still doesn’t entirely believe it. 

Part of Beau always thought she wasn’t special enough to die young. Mollymauk was the kind of person to die young - “whore with a heart of gold” and all that. Beau would certainly consider herself a whore, but the heart of gold is a stretch. She doesn’t even have a mysterious past or magic powers - she’s just some shithead rich kid from Kamordah who got good at punching. Not really special enough for the universe to want. If she died, it’d be like snuffing out a shitty candle in a room that’s on fire - pointless and none darker.

“If” she died. Like she wasn’t already dead.

 _At least you ate mad pussy._ Is the only comfort her mind can come up with. 

She blinks, and there’s a stationary white dot, the size of a fly, in front of her face. Based on the position of her fists as she flinches, it might actually be large, on the distant horizon.

Under normal circumstances, Beau would try to sneak up on it and assess at her own pace, but here there are no walls to cling to, no trees to slink between. Plus, nothing can kill you twice.

And if it can, it deserves to.

“Hey!” She barks.

The white dot does not react. Too far, then. That does not bode well for the actual size of this thing. She sighs and trudges forward through the flooded blackness. It moves with the density of water, but makes much, much less sound. She would have thought it were silent too if not for her trained ears.

“Yo!” Beau calls again after wading a few dozen feet towards it. The void is playing tricks on her eyes, and she’s not sure how much bigger it’s gotten - if it’s gotten bigger at all. The mysterious white dot remains stationary.

“Alright, fine.” Beau cracks her neck.

She gets as good of a running start as she can with the water resistance, which is still decent given her skills, and springs into an aerial. She has enough height to straighten herself out before her feet can break the surface again, and uses the momentum to keep running - on top of the water now.

With her full speed regained, she beelines for the for the shape, sprinting hard enough to make her lungs burn if she still needed to breathe. Though she has no visual reference, she can feel ground being covered, faintly hear the tiny splashes of droplets kicked up from her surface running.

Beauregard runs for a long time. She does not get tired in this place, but she does get fucking irritated. After several long minutes of full dashing, the shape has not changed. It does not grow, it does not shrink, it does not make noise. For all she knows it could be a floater or an illusion. 

Her steps falter at the thought, and she wipes out suddenly, crashing her entire body into the shallow water.

She’s submerged, more fully than she should be for ankle-deep water. In fact, she’s instinctually swimming in it, completely engulfed by water so black and dark it’s like she’s swimming in the void she ran through. Maybe she is. 

Beau kicks upward, hoping to break the surface. The depth is terrifying. She’s not drowning, though her body panics like she should be, yearning for a burst of air it doesn’t need but insists should be coming. She has to get out of this water, get somewhere she can orient her movement. Beau has never had a full-blown panic attack before, but she thinks she may be having one now. 

Desperate and terrified, she decides she must be swimming downward and flips herself over, propelling herself in what she thinks is the opposite direction, given she has no visual reference.

The first stroke breaks the surface, and Beau gasps reflexively for air she does not need. Her hand grabs something solid and large and she drags her body onto it, her chest heaving as an unnecessary but instinctual response to her panic.

She lies flat on her back and stares up into more inky, endless darkness, forcing her body to calm down. Nott’s phobia finally makes sense. Fjord can go fuck himself - she’s never so much as drinking a glass of water ever again.

 _There’s a lot of things I’ll probably never do again._ Beau realizes.

Sitting upright, reality continues to be unyielding nothingness. She idly wonders if maybe there’s actually much here, but her lack of darkvision makes it seem like void. 

One look down reveals her robes are visible, in full cobalt blue. Not even dark. Like a bright painting of her body on a black background.

Beau sighs and runs her hands over the surface below her. She’s on some kind of hard ground, perhaps a massive boulder. It doesn’t make sense for all her thrashing movement under the water to have missed this, any more than breaking the surface so suddenly did.

She stands, gazing out into more void. Curiously, she sticks a pointed toe forward and dips it into the water she just came from.

There is no water. Her foot hits more rock, where she’s absolutely positive she was drowning a minute ago. Puzzled and slightly irritated, she steps forward. It is indeed solid ground. More cautious steps forward confirm there is no longer any water in this place. 

Frustrated, she whips around, ready to storm in the opposite direction of void out of spite. Instead, she sees something that is most definitely not void.

Caduceus Clay kneels on the ground, facing away, hunched over something she cannot see, 50 feet in front of her.

“Caduceus!” Beau shouts, running towards him.

Like the dot, Caduceus does not acknowledge her, but he _does_ get closer when she moves, which is a relief. Beauregard stands over him now as he kneels, eyes closed and hands hovering a few inches off the ground. His voice is muffled in the same way the water was, but she recognizes the words he’s murmuring as Giant; his spellwork language. 

“What are you up to, Caddyshack?” Beau asks, mostly to herself, but with the slight hope he’ll suddenly be able to hear her. 

Caduceus finishes murmuring a beat after she asks and opens his eyes, looking straight ahead into nothing, sweeping his head in a horizontal arc as if assessing something she cannot see. 

“Would anyone like to do anything to help?” He asks the darkness. 

“I would.” Fjord’s voice says, slightly less muffled than Cad’s and with no determinable source. 

Beau blinks and Fjord is suddenly kneeling across from Caduceus, a bit to the right. 

“What the fuck?” She whispers. 

“Hey, Beau.” Fjord says, staring at the ground in front of him. 

Beau’s heart crawls into her throat. She’s dead. She’s really, actually dead, and she can’t even deny it anymore because Fjord is most definitely addressing her dead body. 

Her hands clench into fists. Of course she’s dead. She knew that. She’s just being stupid about it. Accept it and move on. 

Enjoy your funeral and watch Caduceus decompose your body. 

“I don’t have anything physical to offer,” Fjord continues, “Which is sort of typical. But I’ve been told I’m pretty good with words.”

He sighs and wipes a hand over his eyes and down his face. Beau’s nails dig into her palms. 

“When I… when I lost my powers, you didn’t bullshit me. You told me being normal wasn’t too bad. You even offered to help me train without them.” He laughs, full of grief but still genuine. “I wasn’t good, but you gave me something tangible to work with. A direct path to being less of a, well, a liability.”

Beau snorts. The tension in her body eases a bit. 

“You’ve done a lot to support me, as my first mate and as… as my best friend. For so long I didn’t know what I was doing, and I still don’t think I really do, no matter how much better I’ve gotten. We still need you, First Mate. Now will you get your arse back here?”

Fjord looks up expectantly at Caduceus, finished. The firbolg nods, a warm smile on his face. 

A surge of emotion rushes through her. This isn’t her funeral, this is her _resurrection_. They came back for her - or, technically they want her to come back for them. 

She’s beaming now, one of the few unironic smiles she’s ever shown in her life (and in this case, death). 

“Anyone else?” Caduceus’s voice is a bit clearer than before, and his gaze sweeps around the void. Beau realizes it must be where her friends are sitting in the living world. 

“Me.” Jester blinks into existence next to Fjord, both arms wrapping herself in a hug. 

“I am going to give you this, Beau,” Jester says. She uncurls her arms from the self-hug, and Beau realizes she was clutching something to her chest. Whatever it is, it is not visible in this realm, but Jester’s hands curl around it as she holds it out. 

“And it’s really hard because you know it’s my favorite book, but, if you come back I won’t really need it anymore because-”

Beau watches Jester lower her hands to the spot where Fjord had been staring for his speech, and the moment she retracts her hands, the familiar worn paperback cover of “Tusk Love” blinks into existence. It hovers a few inches in the air. 

“-because you’ve taught me a lot more about love than this dumb book ever did. You were the first person to say they loved me that wasn’t my Mama.” Her voice cracks and Beau realizes there’s tears running down Jester’s face. Her own eyes start to sting too. 

“I’ve been asking the Traveler to help, since he helped me with Caduceus last time and he knows how cool you are and how much you mean to me so,” Jester smears a tear across her face with the heel of her hand, “So you have to come back because he’s really super powerful and he’ll make sure you don’t get lost or whatever.” She sniffs. “Maybe just draw a dick on the ground so he can find you.”

“Like the fuckin Bat Signal.” Fjord murmurs beside her. 

“Like the Bat Signal.” Jester nods solemnly. 

Beau chokes out a broken laugh, and realizes she’s been crying too, quickly wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

Caduceus nods placidly at Jester.

“I believe we need one more,” he says to the empty space beside her two visible friends. His voice is much clearer now, like he’s across the room rather than behind a wall.

“I will go.” Says a Zemnian accent. 

Caleb appears a few paces down to Jester’s left. Beau can easily picture Nott and Yasha sitting in the space between them. She’s almost home.

He leans forward and places something near the book. When he pulls away, a single white pearl hovers the same distance off the ground.

Caleb murmurs a few words in Zemnian and traces a familiar geographic symbol that glows a beautiful white. With a final pulse it shimmers into nothing. There is suddenly a shadow at her feet.

Beau looks up and blinks in surprise at a tiny, glowing orb hovering above her head, shedding the bare minimum of light in the unending darkness. For an instant she can see infinite versions of herself looking at the same light, gone before she can blink.

“May fortune favor your journey back, Beauregard Lionett,” Caleb says, “We have yet to leave the Empire better than we found it.”

Caleb nods curtly to Caduceus, who smiles back. 

“No need to ramble, Caleb.” Beau says. It’s sarcastic, but she doesn’t mean it. If he’d said anything else it would feel fake, from him. 

“Here we go.” Caduceus clutches empty air and places it beside the book and the pearl. When his hands pull away, three massive uniform diamonds and several tiny, mismatched ones hover there. The party definitely could not afford those when she died. They likely bought what they could and stole the rest; hence the random accompanying array. 

Caduceus bows his head and reaches both arms out, joining hands with Jester and Caleb. Jester grabs Fjord’s hand. He and Caleb hold onto the empty air beside them. As their fingers wrap around invisible hands, Nott and Yasha blink into existence too. 

She’s almost home. Excitement floods her limbs like energy before battle. Caduceus bows his head and begins chanting in Giant. 

“So, you wish to return.” A deep feminine voice permeates the void and her very bones. 

Instinctively, Beau whips around to find the source and is nose-to-nose with a massive porcelain mask, bigger than her entire body. She would have assumed it was simply floating in the darkness if not for the faint glow of the mote above her head, shedding enough light to just barely outline a massive black cloak against matching void. 

The imposing figure draws back, straightening out to a daunting 20 feet tall. As the mask pulls back, Beauregard recognizes it as the distant white spec she spent ages chasing. 

The Raven Queen, Goddess of Death as Passage. 

Beauregard covers her hope and fear with a neutral mask and bows stiffly at the waist. She never in her wildest dreams thought she’d be in the presence of a god - literally any other one of her friends had a stronger chance of that happening. She slips into her “ambassador of the Cobalt Soul” persona - the one she uses to get the Mighty Nein in and out of places. It’s the closest Beau gets to respectful, and it’ll have to do. 

“Your majesty.” Beau greets, holding the bow just a bit longer than usual. Is “majesty” the right title? She has no idea what she’s doing.

“You wish to return.” The Raven Queen repeats. It’s not a question, just an opportunity to correct. 

Beau will do no such thing. 

“With all due respect, your majesty, I can’t leave them.”

The Raven Queen hums. 

“You can. In fact, you should. This is an exception, not an option I provide. Your advocates are willing to give sufficient offering to placehold your soul until you come to me again. But do not be mistaken. Your soul does not belong there.”

Beau feels some emotion like ice radiating from the Queen’s words. She can’t even begin to describe it - not anger, or annoyance. It’s just... truth. Pointed, but pure truth. 

“I meant no offense, your majesty. I only meant I wish to return.”

The Raven Queen nods and vanishes in a blink. 

“Then let us see what they offer for you.”

Beau turns back around to see the Raven Queen looming behind Caduceus, staring over his shoulder at the diamonds, pearl, and paperback porn. 

In the dim light of her mote, Beauregard watches the Raven Queen beckon with a finger, and the items raise higher into the air, spinning slowly in an orbit. Below it, the ground caves into a perfectly circular hole, 10 feet in diameter. 

The Queen crooks her finger and the pearl is pulled from the orbit, pulled towards her mask. 

“Interesting. The magic of those who spite me.” Right. The beacon recycles souls; the Raven Queen probably hates dunamancy.

She clenches her fist and the pearl crushes in on itself, ground to dust. With a wave of her hand, it scatters to the nonexistent wind. 

Beau looks up at her fragment of possibility, still glowing faintly. At least she didn’t (or couldn’t?) wipe away the magic. 

The Raven Queen’s finger beckons again, and the ratty copy of “Tusk Love” floats from its orbit towards her mask. It fans through itself once, quickly, before her. The Queen lets out another short hum.

“It does have great sentimental value.” Says the sourceless voice. Beau swears she sounds amused. The Queen’s wrist flicks and the book vanishes into thin air. 

Did… did Jester just contribute to the Raven Queen’s porn stash?

“And now the placeholder.”

The Raven Queen beckons the gems. They snap into a perfect line in front of her, smallest to largest. She taps them, one by one, and they crush in on themselves, like the pearl, dissipating into the ether. 

Beau is thrumming with anticipation. They wanted her back. They're _getting_ her back. They made offerings, they stole diam-

“It’s not enough.” The Raven Queen says. 

“What?”

Beau remembers being young, and scared of her father, and watching a plate of fine porcelain fall off the pedestal and shatter. She remembers the sound so vividly, because it’s replaying over and over in her mind now. 

“These diamonds are worth less than the price of a placeholder. Some of them are fake.”

“Can I-”

“No, you may not return.”

“But-”

“My champion will take you now.”

Beau’s world is pulsing with adrenaline. 

“Fuck you! You couldn’t even be bothered to come find me when I wandered around your purgatory for hours. They actually came for me!”

“Your soul is worth more than this. The offering is not sufficient.”

“That’s bullshit! My soul isn’t worth dick! Why not give it to someone who fucking wants it?”

Right there, her friends are _right there_ , frozen in a circle around a hole in the ground. 

“Enough!”

A hole… where her body is. That’s it. That has to be her portal home. The Queen tugs at her soul - she can feel it - but she resists and sprints full speed towards the pit in the floor of this void.

“Come Back.” The Queen orders. The words ring throughout the void, into her bones. Beau succumbs to the command. She freezes in place, the Queen’s Talons grip her soul.

 _The mote,_ she thinks. _Re-do! Re-do! Bend fate, whatever!_

As she wills it, the light above her head blinks out. The grip on her soul never happened. Time and space correct as if she had never stopped at all. The Raven Queen roars with rage. 

There’s a sudden sharp pain in her spine and she feels the warmth of blood spreading as a blade is removed, quickly as it entered. It’s strong enough to bring her to her knees, stunned. 

She glances over her shoulder briefly and sees a hooded figure about 30 feet behind her, with a bird mask and growths of bone protruding from its shoulder. It fades back into the void, holstering a dagger coated, presumably, in her blood.

Whatever that creature was, it’s draining her life force in a way she can’t describe - probably because she never had life in this form, technically speaking. Beau has been on the verge of death many times, and in this place the concept is much more terrifying. She stumbles shakily to her feet.

The Raven Queen tugs at her soul again, and Beau, feet from the hole that would send her back, feels the talons not only grip her heart, but sink in. She lets out a guttural, raw scream of agony as the Raven Queen begins to rip her soul from this plane to the next. Her head spins, black spots cloud her vision. 

Then the grip releases and Beau stumbles. There’s a wisp of green smoke and suddenly four identical cloaked figures flank the Raven Queen, grappling her and dealing some kind of magical damage via touch. 

For one very confusing moment, Beau thinks the Pumat Sols have come to save her from death. Then she recognizes the cloaks from the idols Jester painted; it’s the Traveler, invoking duplicity.

“Never played a prank on Death before.” They say in unison.

As much as Beau would like to stay and ask how the fuck Jester’s shady god managed to get into the realm of another deity, she decides to take advantage of the moment. No offense to the Traveler, but he’s likely not stronger than the Raven Queen on her home turf, just _very very_ distracting.

Beau sprints past the grappling gods and towards the hole. A few feet from freedom, all of the Traveler’s avatars vanish and the wake of what was presumably his true form stands the hooded figure from before, holding two bloody daggers, staring directly at her despite the mask and injured goddess between them. The creature that just _killed a god_ has its sights on her.

Beau doesn’t give it time to reach her. She flips the two birds the bird and steps feet first into the hole, praying to literally ever god not present that this is what will bring her back to life. Back to the Mighty Nein.

The Raven Queen, the god-killer, and the projection of her friends all give way to blackness.

Beau wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on tumblr: [@okiedokeTM](okiedoketm.tumblr.com)
> 
> If you liked this, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated and let me know if people want more!


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